Projects

Adventures in the Void

Explore a universe filled with adventure, danger, and the chance to accomplish the impossible.

Adventures in the Void is an upcoming Tabletop RPG from Helpful Goat Gaming.

A bar, in the wrong part of space

The bar was dingy. Galem thought about that statement. It was true of nearly every bar this far out in the boondocks of the galaxy. What was impressive was that this bar was dingy even by those standards. He swept one eye over the holo-idol rocking out in the corner, her mesmer dance creating the music that pulsed through the walls of the bar.

There were few enough people in the bar that she was working extra hard in the hope of making enough to cover her time. An Apex, lithe and impossibly elegant when she moved. Her performance had attracted the attention of two very drunk young Dorin. One looked to be a Street Rager, going by the chains and brass knuckles he wasn’t even bothering to conceal. The other was trying to be clever and hide the fact that he was a Dreadnaught operator. However, hiding a massive backpack the size of the person was easier said than done. Trust a Dorin to be clever.

Actually, scratch that. Don’t trust a Dorin. About anything. Or anyone else, for that matter. First lesson of being a Greylin: Other races were not to be trusted.

The weapon scanner at the door buzzed as an Elesian walked in. Long ears were augmented by cybernetic implants. From the looks of it, she would be able to hear well enough that there wouldn’t be a point blinding her. Given that Galem was trying to arrest this particular Elesian, he didn’t find that fact particularly comforting. He reached out, felt the… otherness at the edge of his mind.This is the target. You hesitate. Waver. You are concerned. She is capable, but her powers are nothing but technological baubles. You shall show her the fate of those who disrespect our land between lands, our darkness between the stars. Galem felt a surge of power, and a darkness suffuse his vision. Time to work. He smiled at the Holo-idol, felt the focus of her mind centered entirely on her work. Singularly concentrated. Completely undefended. Galem smiled. The Void would be fed well tonight.

A ship, above an uncharted planet

Telath unfolded her tendrils, slowly sweeping them back and forth in an attempt to rouse herself from the torpor of cryo-sleep. She’d lost multiple sprouts, and over half of her tendrils still weren’t responding correctly. She winced slightly. Her senses were muted, distorted by the lack of fully awake sensors. She hated the bluriness. Most of her race felt secure even if they were basically blind, so long as there were others of their kind. The colony kept you safe. It also kept you under wraps, root bound. Telath only felt safe when she could sense clearly. She shifted a tendril and slammed it into a bulkhead. She winced as another sprout drifted to the ground in the reduced gravity. She hated cryo so much.

Cryo-sleep was always rough on the Biometra, interfering with their fundamental biological processes. It was also always rough on Ignan Voidborn, incarnations of the fire of the Void itself.. Given that she was both, she hated the entire process. But it was better than needing to be awake for the five years that their ship had been in transit. Five times the speed of light only did so much, and she knew that she would end up very very bored given that timeframe. Telath bored was good for no one.

She hated the process, but what choice did she have? Grethan, the Biometra homeworld was dying. While Biometran colonists had found other habitable planets centuries earlier, to try to move the central seed bays would risk the entire future of the species, to say nothing of the danger contamination in transit. So every available Xenobiologist had been dispatched. Honestly, she had welcomed the chance to spend the better part of a year never returning to Grethan.

She had beseeched the lands that she arrived at, just as the other xenobiologists would have, trying to find something to quell the rot infecting the core of their world. After every sublight system had been tried and had come up empty, further steps were required. And so Telath had been dispatched to a system 25 lightyears spinward.

“Xenobiologist First Rank Telath, may the sun guide your waking.” The voice of the ship’s computer was specifically designed to be soothing to Biometran psychobiology. Telath hated it with a rare passion. “We are currently arriving at Planet 26YNB. Preliminary scans show that the biosphere was as indicated from long range sensors. Several additional levels of detail are also available.”

Telath wedged into a command rest vessel, their still frozen tendrils making the process exponentially more difficult. “What details?” There was a noticeable sound of processing, along with the slight scent of vanilla as subordinate bioprocessors kicked in.

There was a pause before the mechanical voice answered. “The polar caps are 14.3% more expansive than predicted based on scans from when we departed.” Telath nodded. She had been assigned to the far limits of scanner range. Some variance was to be expected. “There are extensive electrical signatures, along with electromagnetic radiation patterns consistent with intelligent, and technologically advanced, life.”

Telath whipped her head towards the relevant display faster than she imagined she could. Sure enough, there were readings. Readings that could only make sense if advanced life was present on the surface. This was not in the mission dossier. Now, the question was how advanced, and what the disposition of the unknown life was.

“Sensors indicate a space based laser-net forming around us. Initial estimates suggest that it will easily destroy our shields and hull.”

Quick mental calculations told Telath that there was no time to try to dodge the net and the missiles. Telath remembered the sun of her homeworld, the soil. How boring it was. “Screw it.” She slapped a tendril against the button to trigger an emergency eject, directing the pod to the surface of the planet trying very hard to kill them. She had always wanted to see new planets.

A home, full of light and life

“Wake up, Daddy!”Slowly, blearily, Ryke blinked his eyes open. He felt as though he was moving through quicksand as he turned his head towards the tiny energetic bundle of excitement next to the bed.

“Wake up, Daddy! You said that you would take me to the park today! Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go!”

The bed seemed impossibly comfortable, but a promise was a promise, and he hated to disappoint his daughter. It felt like he wasn’t able to see her as often as he should have. Things had just been so… busy recently. His body hurt. His ribs ached, and he didn’t want to look, for fear that he would see horrible bruises and call her attention to them. That would scare her, and that was hardly a goal. He struggled to his feet, and smiled down. “Sure thing, honey. Get your coat on. After all, a promise…”

“Is a promise!” She disappeared, laughing, hopefully to pull on a coat.

~

They walked down the street. The weather was warm, and the sky was a lovely shade of blue. It seemed like it had been so long since Ryke had walked down a street like this. No running, no hiding, no wondering what the sightlines were, or where there was cover. Ryke tried to remember when the last time was, but it felt like it was just out of reach. He strained his memory, stretching towards the glimmer of a point of recollection. A hovercar. Beautiful weather, a blue sky. A… hovercar.

“Daddy, candy!”

The memory was gone, the point of recollection faded. Ryke looked up and saw the stand, with the vendbot waiting expectantly behind the cart. They were… antiquated, but something about the bots appealed to children, explaining why you only saw them for treats and toys anymore, at least in the more upscale areas.

Upscale areas… The point of recollection suddenly loomed closer, as if by taking his mind off of it he had allowed it to rush towards him. Visiting an upscale area… Hovercar… the pain in his ribs… Why why why why why? His vision had faded, a field of pure black, featureless and blank.

The letters floated in bright green against the black field. His visual field began to resolve into a shapes, metal, glass, tubes. He stirred, then started at the fact that his ribs didn’t hurt. He reached for them, and as he looked, saw a metallic hand touching a torso that sheened like bright silver.

“How? What?” He felt like there was something he should remember, felt his processors trying to isolate a file that he thought he had been reviewing but now couldn’t clearly recall.

Dr. Kaybler strode into view, her smile tinged with confusion. 86% probability that she was wondering at his actions. “Are you ready to go, RU-59? I was promised that you would be available to escort me to the Dark Zone today.

RU-59 paused, stretching his hands, performing sub-system checks using background processing while attending to his weapons and armor statuses with his primary systems. The question, took an extra moment to process for some reason. “Of course, Dr. Kaybler. A promise is a promise, after all.” A sub-sub-processor momentarily noticed the phrasing and initiated a query into the phrasing, but it was swept away in the midst of many other protocols.

A spaceship, operating normally

Janren Alesko often thought that the best feeling in the world was seeing a ship running smoothly. When the sub-lights were thrumming without breaking even into the yellow, when the warp would be ready if he so much as wondered about needing it, when each and every crew member was ready for whatever the Void might throw at them. He wondered how long it had been since he had gotten to see that as the Dragon’s Wing lurched literally and figuratively sickeningly.

“That last salvo took out the long range scanners, I have no idea how many more of them there might be!” Kor screamed. Jansen had always thought that the sensor operator and resident scientific expert was a bit high strung. He got worried about every last little thing that they tried to remove from a wild planet, with warnings of biological contamination, unintended biosphere effects, mass extinction events, etc etc etc. Never a word about how much cred that particular bright purple, seven legged lizard might be worth though. This time, though, the level of panic felt about right.

“I still have power in the guns, acquiring targeting solutions on the two fighters that are buzzing us.” Alla was calm, cool, collected. At least her voice was. Her tail was whipping wildly from side to side, and Janren had long since learned that it was better to watch a Apex’s tail than listen to their voice. He wasn’t sure if she was scared at the implications of what was to come, or if she was excited at the prospect of shooting the hell out of some fighters. He worried it might be both.

“I think I’ve plotted a course to Ralvin-9 that bounces us through six subsystems to shake them and doesn’t park us in the middle of the moon on arrival. Or along the way I guess.”

Janren blinked slowly at his Watcher navigator. “HOW SURE?”

“About the six subsystems being enough to lose them? Well, it’s hard to say. Normally pirates ships are focused on short range tracking, and these ones seem to come out of the Elven shipyards at…”

“ABOUT THE MATERIALIZING IN A MOON! WE CAN’T ALL JUST REFORM WHEN WE DIE!” Janren’s experience with Watcher’s had taught the Elesian that Watchers were impossibly skilled at the calculations necessary to move a ship through the vast dimensionalities of the Void. They were also generally impossible.

“Oh… Dunno, 75% sure?”

Janren winced. “What the hell?” he asked no one in particular. “Do it.”

These are the kinds of stories that we want to help you tell.

The universe is full of worlds, each of which teems with life and adventure. Magic and technology have fought, blended, and empowered each other. Alien life is discovered every day. Sometimes the new life is wise and peaceful. Often it is distinctly warlike. New worlds are available for exploration, but the further one goes, the more dangerous the journey. The Void is full of wonders and treasure, but mysterious dangers guard them. Besides even those dangers, others who want the same wonders aren’t inclined to share.

Adventures in the Void features:

Elegantly intuitive mechanics

A deep character creator, featuring the Ontology system

Mechs

The enormous variety of worlds that only an entire universe can offer

A variety of tech levels, ranging from "congratulations, you can put yourselves in space" to "time for my daily teleporter commute"

Did I mention Mechs?

Thrilling capability-based space flight and combat

Systems for both tense action sequences and narrative flow gameplay

SERIOUSLY, MECHS. SERIOUSLY. MECHS IN SPACE. Just click the links below. You know you want to.